The Ladykillers: Studiocanal 4K Restoration

❉ New 4K restoration to be released in cinemas and on 4K UHD, Blu-ray & DVD.

To celebrate the 65th anniversary of Ealing Studios’ flawless The Ladykillers, STUDIOCANAL will be releasing the first ever 4k restoration of the 1955 black comedy from the original 3-strip Technicolor negative, showcasing director Alexander Mackendrick’s vision in its full glory.

The Ladykillers features an all-star line-up of the finest comedy actors of the era: Alec Guinness (Kind Hearts and CoronetsThe Lavender Hill Mob) plays the gang’s mastermind ‘Professor Marcus’; Cecil Parker (A French Mistress) is Claude otherwise known as ‘Major Courtney’; Peter Sellers (I’m Alright Jack) is Harry aka ‘Mr Robinson’; Herbert Lom (The Pink Panther) is Louis aka ‘Mr Harvey’ and Danny Green (A Kid For Two Farthings) plays One-Round also known as ‘Mr Lawson’.  Jack Warner, Frankie Howerd and Kenneth Connor also appear in supporting roles.

As The Ladykillers was the last Technicolor three-strip film shot in the UK, it was crucially important that the original camera negative was used for a restoration that will serve as the best version of the film since its original release. The restoration began with the 4K pin-registered scanning of the original 1950s Technicolor three-strip camera negative. The three strips had to have their colour separations combined to produce the final colour image. One of the biggest issues to overcome was aligning the colour separations together, initially an automated process, but also requiring a huge amount of manual tweaking.

Manual and automated digital restoration was carried out over the aligned images. The film suffered from a few extreme issues such as blue marks in the middle to right hand side of frame throughout the film that had to be removed, there was significant density fluctuation (flicker) that has been corrected as best as possible on a shot by shot basis. Many shots suffered from instability and some sections also suffered from scratching, the worst being a four-minute section including scratches throughout the sequence with up to eight onscreen at a time. In total the film benefitted from over a 1000 hours’ worth of 4K digital restoration.

A 35mm Technicolor print was used as a reference for the colour grade to ensure the new HDR Dolby Vision master stayed true to the films original 1950s ‘Colour by Technicolor’ look.

The Ladykillers Pop Art

To celebrate the anniversary of Ealing Studios’ flawless black comedy, Art & Hue has had the pleasure to create six artcards, based on “The Ladykillers” pop art collection, but in colours exclusive to the new release, which will be in the 4K UHD Collector’s Edition featuring “The Ladykillers” gang and Mrs. Wilberforce.

An official collaboration with Studiocanal, Art & Hue had the pleasure to delve into the archives of the classic Ealing Comedies to create these stylish pop art prints, all available in 3 sizes & 19 colours.

Exclusively by Art & Hue, all pop art is printed on museum-quality archival card of 310gsm, made from 100% cotton, with fine-art pigment inks for longevity. Visit artandhue.com/ladykillers to see the full pop art collection

UHD, Blu-ray and DVD Special Features:

❉ UHD, Blu-ray and DVD
❉ The feature in both 1.37:1 and 1.66:1 aspect ratios
❉ ‘Those Glorious Ealing Films’ CD soundtrack (with music from The Ladykillers, Passport to Pimlico, Kind Hearts & Coronets and more)
❉ 64-page booklet
❉ 6 Pop Art artcards by Art & Hue
❉ NEW documentary ‘Investigating the Ladykillers’ featuring new and archive interviews including Reece Shearsmith, The Guardian’s Catherine Shoard, Stuart Maconie, Ronald Harwood, Allan Scott and Terence Davies
❉ NEW ‘Colour in The Ladykillers’: new interview with Professor Keith Johnston
❉ ‘Forever Ealing’ documentary narrated by Michael Balcon’s grandson Daniel Day-Lewis
❉ Lobby Cards gallery
❉ Behind-the-scenes gallery
❉ Audio commentary with author and film scholar Philip Kemp
❉ King’s Cross locations featurette with Alan Dein
❉ Excerpt from BBC Omnibus ‘Made in Ealing’ (1986) featuring interviews with Alexander Mackendrick and William Rose.
❉ Audio interview with Assistant Director Tom Pevsner
❉ Audio interview with Unit Production Manager David Peers
❉ Peter Sellers spoof trailer from the set of The Ladykillers
❉ Trailer

‘The Ladykillers’ will be released in cinemas on 23rd October 2020 and the 5-disc 4K UHD Collector’s Edition (and standard Blu-ray and DVD) will be released on 9th November 2020 and is available to pre-order HERE.


❉ News source: Lisa Richards/Art & Hue.

❉ We Are Cult is not responsible for the content of this news release.

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